What does the expression "wind rose"

Beautiful poetic expression "wind rose" is called a strict heraldic symbol-an octagon – the symbol of perfection and the desire for wonderful, romance of distant wanderings. And in fact is a rigorous mathematical diagram.

The history of the symbol

The story of the birth of the sign "rose of the winds" goes far in depth of centuries. Initially it was the symbol of the navigation star the navigation. In the Northernhemisphere by such a fixed star in the night sky is the North star. The sailors long enough learned to determine latitude and roughly determine their location at sea. An ideal reference for experienced sailors was a breeze. After all, a constant sea winds at certain times of the year, and knowing these laws, the captain corrected its course and led unerringly to the ship from a long voyage to home port. So the character of the navigation star acquired additional importance, and starry rays began to point to the cardinal directions: North, South, East and West. Sign of the Rose, punctured at the shoulder, was a kind of amulet for sailors. He gave them confidence in the correctness of the route and a successful return to his native land. Today is a tattoo more symbol search paths – the guiding star. Inside the eight-pointed wind rose indicate the intermediate points northeast, Southeast, Northwest and southwest, the rays shorter.

Wind rose – a sign of the meteorological conditions

In addition to decorative value, the wind rose has a pure and applied nature that carries the necessary information. First of all, in one form or another wind rose used by meteorologists. On the orders of interested contractors, they build the vector diagram, which indicates the regime prevailing in a particular area of winds over a certain period of time – month, season, year, long-term value. Indeed, knowledge of the meteorological situation, trends and forces prevailing air flow is needed in many branches of economic activity and social construction. In the construction of airfields, it is necessary to choose the direction of the runways that was less "side-wind". In urban planning without rose does not do: it is necessary to consider where to place industrial enterprises, to coming out of their pipes waste is not carried by the wind into residential areas where to break the forest zone, how to Orient the main avenues to proskvozilo" the city of cold winds, or, conversely, to increase the "flow through" in the southern regions. In contrast to the symbol of the wind rose – diagrams of rays of different lengths, and their length depends on the frequency of days when the wind is blowing from this direction.